


foolish

by hydrospanners



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Brooding, Drabble, Friendship, Gen, Self-Doubt, in which varric adopts another hapless hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 12:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14261187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: Ries Adaar deals with the loss of old friends and the role he played in their deaths. Varric offers sage advice.





	foolish

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr. Written for Fictober 2017.

Ries held his head in both hands, running his thumbs along the ridge of his horns as he drew deep breaths and tried not to panic. He was a grown man, a Qunari, an apostate who had survived the war. He was the Inquisitor’s brother. He couldn’t be out here losing his shit in public. **  
**

“Here, kid.” Varric waved a flask of something strong and awful-smelling under his nose. Against his better judgment—which had already proved itself piss-poor—Ries drank deeply of what turned out to be a very potent whiskey. “You wanna talk about it?” Varric asked.

Ries wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, everything inside him burning from the liquor. “No,” he said. Then, “Maybe.” He could feel the fire all the way in his toes.

Varric settled onto the bench beside him, producing a second flask from the deep and mysterious recesses of his overcoat. “This isn’t your fault, kid. Nothing you could’ve done.”

Ries ran his hand over his face, scrubbing away the tears that kept springing to his eyes. “I feel so foolish.”

“You were trying to help.”

“That’s the worst part, Varric. I  _wasn’t_. I mean, I was—“ he scrubbed at his damned traitorous watering eyes. “I wanted to help. That’s a very different thing from wanting them to be helped. What I was doing—It was about me. I wanted me to be the one that helped. Do you see?”

Varric sipped from his flask. “So you wanted hero credit? On the list of bad things people do, Stretch, that’s—“

“It wasn’t about credit. It was about—My ego doesn’t need to be recognized. It needs to be  _right_. I believed in the Chantry and the Circle and because  _I_ believed it, I only let myself see evidence that supported me. Do you understand? I ignored facts and warning signs because they contradicted what I already chose to believe.” Ries laughed harshly, shaking his head. “I became the thing I always accused Niria of being.”

“Stupid?”

“Willfully ignorant.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s a different thing,” Ries insisted. “There’s nothing you can do about stupid. But willfully ignorant—that’s a person who could be brilliant, but chooses not to be. Out of fear or prejudice or laziness… I accused Ria of all three at one point or another. And now look at her,” he gestured to the Keep looming over them, “and look at me. She led her people to this. I led mine to early graves.”

Varric kept silent for a long time, turning his flask this way and that in his broad hands. It occurred to Ries that he probably shouldn’t be saying any of this to him. That it would find its way into one of his stories and he would find himself immortalized by his favorite author as a villain. It was just… something about Varric Tethras made talking easy. He could admit things to the dwarf that he could never in a million years have admitted to himself. Things he would die before admitting to his sister.

Things like this.

“Twinkle Toes has led her fair share of people to early graves,” Varric finally said. He wasn’t quite frowning, but his expression was uncomfortably serious. “Most people here have, Stretch. It comes with the territory.”

“I got them killed to prove a point,” Ries said. “To  _myself_. No one else would have even known or cared.”

“There’s a war on, kid. The Chantry had food and shelter and walls between them and everything else. Whatever your reasons were, it wasn’t a bad plan.”

“They were apostates, Varric.”

“Exactly. Shit’s dangerous for mages right now. Anywhere they went would’ve been a gamble.”

“The Chantry was a bad bet.”

“I think you’re giving yourself too much credit, Stretch. You didn’t walk them to the door. You made a suggestion. You sent a letter. It went to shit, but sometimes that just happens.”

“That’s your advice? Shit happens?”

Varric shrugged. “I’m a writer, kid. I go where the inner turmoil takes me. You want advice, you talk to Chuckles.”

“Pass, thanks,” Ries grumbled.

“Well if you’re gonna brood, might as well do it with the experts. And comfortable chairs and a large fire.” He gestured at the Herald’s Rest. “I bet Hero’s already at the bar.”


End file.
